Perfect Blend: A Novel by Sue Margolis Read Free Book Online Page B

mentioned that one of his staff had just left and asked if she fancied coming to work for him, she practically bit his hand off. The hours were perfect, the traveling time was minimal, and with what remained of her savings she could just about manage on the money Brian was paying. She decided that she would continue bashing away at the journalism in her spare time.
    ZELMA ALWAYS got in at the same time as Amy. Their first job was to unpack and put out all the pastries, cakes, and breads, which were delivered fresh every morning from Konditorei Wiener, along with thick, rich deli-style pizzas and savory French tarts. Next they would start filling baguettes and ciabbatas. Ripe fig and Gorgonzola was Amy’s favorite filling, closely followed by farmhouse pâté and cornichons.
    Each morning until eleven, pots of homemade jam, marmalade, honey, and organic butter were left out on the counter so that customers could help themselves. Since the café was self-service and there was no hot food to prepare, the three of them could cope. Brian was the full-time barista, but when things were quiet, he would happily pitch in with Amy and Zelma, serving food, clearing tables, and loading the dishwasher.
    BY NOW Amy had finished slicing the lemon drizzle cake and had turned her attention to the richly frosted carrot cake.
    “Where’s Zelma?” she said to Brian. She had just looked at her watch and seen it was a quarter past eight. “Not like her to be late.”
    Brian didn’t seem too bothered. “Her bus probably got stuck in traffic.”
    Mrs. Zelma Cohen had been with Brian virtually since Café Mozart had opened. A Help the Aged representative had been visiting small businesses in the area, trying to persuade them to take on retirees. Brian didn’t hesitate. The café had been open a few weeks, and he’d taken on two gap-year students to help run it. It turned out that both of them preferred sleeping to showing up for work and were clearly aiming at a gap life. Having decided to let the students go, he found himself warming to the idea of employing somebody older and reliable who possessed a decent work ethic.
    Since a true lady never revealed her age, Zelma kept hers strictly to herself, but Amy and Brian agreed she had to be seventy. A tiny, birdlike woman, slightly stooped, she would arrive every morning dressed to the nines. Anybody passing her on the street would have said she was off to take morning coffee at the Savoy. Her honey-gold bouffant ’do was always immaculately frosted. Clotheswise, she favored Chanel-style suits with tiny jackets and pencil skirts, the kind that once had demanded a pillbox hat to set them off. The soft knitted, round-necked jackets were edged in braid and had chunky gold buttons on the breast pocket and down the front. They did up courtesy of tiny chains. Underneath she always wore one of her trademark chiffon blouses with a pussycat bow. She accessorized the suits with good patent shoes and matching, roomy handbags. Her lips were always precisely the same shade as her nails, which were painted every week by “a wonderful girl who comes to the house.”
    Since the sixties and until she retired a few years ago, Zelma had worked in the same Marble Arch dress shop—Maison Sandrine in Seymour Place. With a faraway look in her eyes, she never tired of telling Amy how she had “met them all, darling: Lauren Bacall, Grace Kelly, Judy Garland—even the chief rabbi’s wife … the one we had decades ago, not the one we’ve got now. Now, she was a real lady … a bit saggy on top, but she looked a knockout once we got her into a decent bra.”
    Zelma had no need to work. Her late husband, “My Sidney, God rest his soul,” had left her well provided for, but Zelma was bored at home. She missed “going to business.” “It would be different if I’d been able to have children,” she would say, looking soulful. “Then there would be grandchildren to visit and spoil, but it wasn’t to